Do You Know Who Really Voices the Toy Story Woody Dolls?

Actors are a busy lot, particularly if they're of the A-list variety like Tom Hanks. So it's not uncommon when a bit of movie-related merchandising comes out, be it a toy or a video game, to hear someone else performing a character's voice. When this happens there's usually a noticeable difference in quality between the movie version and the toy version. However, that's not exactly the case with Toy Story.

Everyone is familiar with the one-liners heard when a little kid (or in our case, adult) tugs on the string of a Woody doll (yes, we know he prefers to be called an action figure). Pull the string and out comes Tom Hanks saying, "There's a snake in my boots!". You hear it in the movie, you hear it in the games, you hear it from the toys-- sounds the same every time, right?

Turns out - and this is perhaps common knowledge to Pixar-philes - that's not actually Tom Hanks. Here, we'll just let the actor explain himself:

Two things. First, how much charisma does Tom Hanks have? The man is on fire even when telling stories about mundane things like recording additional dialogue. Second, Jim Hanks is a busy man. A quick look at the actor's IMDb page shows us that he's been voicing Woody since back in 1996, when the Toy Story video game hit on all manner of current gen consoles (RIP, Sega Genesis). And while our default cynicism would have us assuming that an A-list actor not wanting to waste their time bringing their character to video games or kids' toys is clearly a sign that they weren't paid well enough to do so, it's clear here that this is a case of Tom Hanks being more than delighted to get his brother some work, and we think that's pretty awesome.

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